Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Chairman, there has been enough tragedy in all of these rescission bills to go around. I see a very great bright…”

“Mr. Chairman, there has been enough tragedy in all of these rescission bills to go around. I see a very great bright spot in what the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] is doing today. In the United States there are anywhere between 750,000 and 1 million homeless children every single day. In any of the education bills that we have, none of the money applies to them, because they are not in school. A few years back with some wisdom we put together a bill here to educate the homeless children, to give them transportation, a piece of paper and pencil to write with. We have reduced the number of homeless children not in school with this bill from 50 percent to 18 and continuing to go down. To take this program out was the height of stupidity. We are not going to be able to compete with the next century if we have children uneducated, unhealthy, and unskilled. I am delighted to support the Porter amendment, because the homeless children in this country who have absolutely no voice but what we can muster in this House will have an opportunity to continue a program. It is not their fault they are homeless. Their mothers and fathers are out of work because we failed somehow to create jobs in this country. But I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] for including the homeless children in this bill.”